[EP15][Social] Dissolve Community Working Group

I have updated the Draft Proposal to dissolve the Community Working Group. This proposal will likely progress to an Active Proposal in the next day or so.

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Can you move to the voting after the community WG weekly meeting on Friday? Some members of community WG have expressed their support in this thread but no WG wide conversation hasnā€™t happened on discord afaik. Would be great if there is a frank Q&A session about how the transition happens.

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  1. The nominations for elections open on June 6 UTC 9:00.
  2. If this proposal goes to vote tomorrow, it will remain open until June 8 at least (5 days).

Which WGs are the nominations open for on June 6 if the dissolution proposal is open until June 8?

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I am interested also to know more about how the transition happens.

Nominations will proceed as normal.

If this proposal passes, the Steward elections scheduled to start at 9am UTC on June 10 for the Community Working Group will not take place.

If this proposal does not pass, Steward elections for the Community Working Group will take place from 9am UTC on June 10 alongside the elections for the other working groups.

Sure makoto.

The migration is simple. For subgroups in the Community WG, the admin of the multisig will be changed from Community to Ecosystem Working Group multisig.

If subgroups havenā€™t been set up, Stewards can decide to set them up before the end of the First Term to complete payments for the Term.

Any funds left in the Community Working Group multisig at the end of the Term will be sent back to the DAO treasury. All of the community related initiatives/subgroups can request funds in the budget for the new working group the subgroup sits under in the next Funding Window (July).

Happy to discuss in more detail on the Community Working Group call.

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  1. Why would anyone put in nominations for a WG that may get dissolved?

  2. What if the WG doesnā€™t get dissolved (i.e. vote fails) and there arenā€™t any nominations for the Community WG?

Because the proposal may not pass.

This is very unlikely, but if that was the case then new elections for the Community WG would be held.

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:saluting_face: One does not open nominations for a position that one is actively trying to dissolve. This is blatant disregard for rules & nomineesā€™ time (who have to arrange for 10,000 votes). I have no words left.

I can see that consensus, process and DAO ethos have gone out the window. You have made up your mind about the results before even the community call tomorrow. I will show myself out.

The nomination process is set out in EP 4. It takes a few minutes to nominate yourself. I will make sure that all (human + genuine) nominees of the Community Working Group election receive 10,000 votes.

I wasnā€™t going to run as a Steward, but if there are no nominees for the Community Working Group I will nominate myself and find two others to do the same.

Is there anything else you would like to criticize?

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TNL stewards including myself donā€™t get paid for doing stewards as itā€™s part of our job as TNL.

It is your right to express concerns but I think you are stepping the line again.

If you are against dissolving community WG, it is on you to get enough buy in for the vote gets rejected and have enough candidate for community WG stewards , not the responsibility of @alisha.eth who is proposing for dissolving it.

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Just want to clarify. If I - hypothetically of course - want to run for what is now Community, should I instead run for Ecosystem?

I have a lot of thoughts about this.

First of all, I only heard about this by stumbling upon this thread - it was not discussed with the wider Community Working Group (and I presume it could be the same situation for the Ecosystem WG). That feels like an oversight, but I donā€™t really mind all that much because I trust @Coltron.eth as our lead steward.

Originally I agreed with this proposal, and Iā€™m not really sure where I land right now but I do want to share some thoughts:


Personally, I havenā€™t done a ton of work in the Community WG during this term. Sometimes I wonder if thatā€™s a bad thing, but sometimes I think it might be a good thing too, because:

  • The stewards theoretically should not be doing the footwork, thatā€™s what the subgroups are for.
  • I chime in when Iā€™m needed and provide perspective and thoughts on things that I can provide value to.

I think viewing this proposal from a lens of ā€œhow much work is being doneā€ is unnecessary because again, the role of the steward is not to put in the footwork, itā€™s to enable subgroups to do things and make sure theyā€™re getting the support they need. Stewards are, from my perspective, merely here to be a concierge that answers questions, directs people to the right places, and makes sure people can access the tools (and the funds) they need to be able to be successful.

So, knowing that, I see the reasoning behind lowering the amount of stewards and folding this into the Ecosystem Working Group. Objectively itā€™s a sound idea, because why have extra stewards if you simply donā€™t need them?

HOWEVER, an important counter-point here is that stewards, contributors, and everyone else are compensated according to the time and contributions they put forth. Unless people are wildly under-or-overestimating their contributions, the number of stewards doesnā€™t matter all that much - if itā€™s more stewards doing less work, thatā€™s fine. If itā€™s less stewards doing more work, thatā€™s fine. Thatā€™s why I think viewing this from a lens of ā€œhow much work is being doneā€ is unnecessary.


Another counterpoint is that this is the first term - I donā€™t necessarily see value in making sweeping changes like this so early, even if itā€™s realistically low impact. And if it is low impact, why does this change need to happen at all? On a micro level itā€™s not that big of a deal, but on a macro level this is changing the core infrastructure of one of the biggest (arguably the biggest) DAOs in the industry.

I heavily, heavily agree with @vegaypā€™s thoughts above:

On the other hand, I feel 3-4 months of roughly work for each of this WGs is not enough time to know what work and what didnā€™t. One clear outcome of this term is our poor coordination, and I think this proposal is trying to tackle this. But I am afraid, this comes out to soon: we havenā€™t have enough time to learn from our previous practices and try to adjust the current model, and this feels more like an aesthetic change rather than an improvement based on previous results.

My hesitancy comes, if, from January, another proposition for organisation comes, and then we will have to change again.

As someone said before, there isnā€™t enough people for so many pods. Itā€™s not about having enough stewards, is about awareness of the time bandwidth that will be required to support this. One Lead for Ecosystem seems too short.

My last thought is that being a steward is fairly symbolic, and I think giving more people the opportunity to represent the ENS DAO as a steward is a good thing. Being a steward comes with a sense of responsibility, pride, and ownership. Being a delegate is one thing and delegates are proud to represent the ENS, but being a steward is another thing and stewards are almost higher level advocates for the brand and the mission.


All that being said, Iā€™m still not sure where I land.

Iā€™m trying to further understand all the various perspectives of this proposal and appreciate everyone sharing their thoughts.

As a disclaimer, I know Iā€™m a steward right now but I donā€™t really have a horse in this race. The first term is almost up and I have not been planning to run again, so it wonā€™t impact me if a community working group does or doesnā€™t exist after this. Iā€™m doing my best to view this objectively.

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Ecosystem WG had a call couple of days ago and this issue was on the agenda. But no one spoke on the issue at all; the call lasted 5 mins (on the topics on the agenda). Was it because no one cares? Not really. One of the most active subgroup in Ecosystem WG has already dissented to this proposal; so has another one in Community WG. The issue was that this proposal did not come as a Temp Check but as a notification of a decision. At no point it felt like the contributors had been requested serious feedback. This was proper backchannel discussion between 3 people and completely against the Rules of Governance which explictly state that the stewards must ā€˜actively solicit discussion and feedbackā€™. It needs to be given more time as we always do. We have multiple calls and twitter townhall/spaces. I am failing to understand the rush behind it.

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This proposal is difficult for me to digest. I canā€™t imagine which kind of sane persons will nominate themselves for a position that may not exist 24-48 hours later.

Edit: I realized that maybe the phrasing was too directly translated from my mother tongue. My meaning was simply to say that I expect fewer people to apply for a position that may end up not existing, so if the proposal is rejected, we may end up missing some good candidates. Hence I would personally prefer to have this voting done for Q1/Q2 2023 and not for the upcoming term.

Also, I think that this whole proposal should be made by the meta-governance working group, with more information to back it up. If itā€™s done without them, as it is now, then their whole function is unclear to me.

I apologize, but this is simply not true. For me to write a good nomination text takes much more than that.

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In my mind, I always equated Ecosystem WG as a technology focused ā€œproductā€ group, and the Community WG as a people focused ā€œmarketingā€ group. Most companies have different departments for these responsibilities, so always thought it natural that ENS DAO would as well.

That said, Iā€™d defer to the stewards of the Community and Ecosystem WGs on what the optimal org structure should be.

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I canā€™t comment on all stewards, but for a few of us itā€™s been a decent amount of work and far from symbolic.

One part of being an active steward is coordinating with other stewards. The more stewards there are the more work that is. I donā€™t know if this is the perfect structure, but it does attempt to address some of the issues that appeared this term.

The DAO will continue to evolve. I look forward to the next term.

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Most definitely! I understand this completely, and like I mentioned earlier in my post people should be compensated for their contributions so I hope the stewards that are putting in the extra work are getting that extra comp!

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I think the more important question is: what benefit is there from Community and Ecosystem WGs being separate. I think the experience from both WGs is that thereā€™s a lot of overlap, and often confusion as to which WG is appropriate for what work. Given the high degree of overlap, and in the interest of removing unnecessary overhead, it makes sense to combine them.

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I think it would be less confusing for the upcoming Steward nominations if we say ā€œcombine Community and Ecosystem WGsā€ instead of dissolve Community WG.

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Iā€™m hoping to dedicate the majority of tomorrow stewardā€™s call this this topic.

Community Steward Call - Every Friday at noon EST. 12pm EST (5:00pm UTC)

Iā€™m conflicted. In my mind this is mostly a structural reorganization, but thereā€™s no way to tell how this will impact the work being performed in the existing subgroups.

As highlighted by @spencecoin, we should be aware that this does reduce the number of positions in the DAO. I was looking forward to seeing contributors elevated to Steward positions next term, but there will be less opportunities for this to happen.

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